VG247 » Project Shieldhttp://www.vg247.com
VG247.comTue, 31 Mar 2015 20:33:48 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1Nvidia Shield video shows off final hardware and featureshttp://www.vg247.com/2013/05/15/nvidia-shield-video-shows-off-final-hardware-and-features/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/15/nvidia-shield-video-shows-off-final-hardware-and-features/#commentsWed, 15 May 2013 05:28:26 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=366832Android-based portable gaming device Nvidia Shield is due in June, with pre-orders opening next week. To entice you to try out the slick-looking device, which can even stream games from your PC so you can relax on the couch, Nvidia has released a video showing off its final design and feature set.

It runs on jellybean and comes pre-loaded with Sonic 4 Episode 2 and Expendable: Rearmed.

Toi get in on the pre-order, you need to sign up for the Shield mailing list via its website. The device is priced at $359.

Thanks, I-Pod.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/15/nvidia-shield-video-shows-off-final-hardware-and-features/feed/6Project Shield: hands-on with Tegra-4 powered goodnesshttp://www.vg247.com/2013/04/03/nvidias-project-shield-hands-on-with-tegra-4-powered-goodness/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/04/03/nvidias-project-shield-hands-on-with-tegra-4-powered-goodness/#commentsWed, 03 Apr 2013 15:20:36 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=354881During GDC 2013, VG247′s Sam Clay was given hands-on time with Nvidia’s Project Shield, the Tegra-4 powered mobile console announced at CES earlier this year. Even better? The demo featured Skyrim streaming from PC, and looking rather lovely.

The idea behind the portable console is to give gamers the ability to play “any game, any where, any time.” This means you can play your games on the bus, train, or hay truck without packing around any extra hardware, obviously.

While it may be an Android device at it’s heart, it has the ability to stream your PC games to allow for playing anywhere in your house on the device providing you have WiFi.

So far, 20 games have been optimized for Tegra with full controller support.

You can expect the device to start shipping at the end of the second quarter.

Nvidia will be present to talk about Project SHIELD, through a session titled: ‘Project SHIELD and Tegra 4: Redefining AFK,’ hosted by senior software engineers Andrew Edelsten and Paul Hodgson.

Finally, Mozilla will be talking about developing games using HTML5.Senior researcher Alon Zakai and engineering director Vladimir Vukicevic will be on-hand in this session titled: ‘Fast and Awesome HTML5 Games’.

GDC 2013 takes place March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/03/02/ps4-html5-project-shield-and-oculus-rift-talks-added-to-gdc-2013/feed/3Nvidia posts record financials, $4.28 billion revenue in 2013http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/14/nvidia-posts-record-financials-4-28-billion-revenue-in-2013/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/14/nvidia-posts-record-financials-4-28-billion-revenue-in-2013/#commentsThu, 14 Feb 2013 09:09:23 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=340086Nvidia has won big in the current fiscal year, posting record revenue of $4.28 billion. The company’s Q4 revenue sits at $1.1 billion, and is indicative of an increase across almost entire the board.

In the company’s financial report for the fiscal year ending January 27th 2013, Nvidia’s Q4 revenue of $1.1 billion signified a 16.1% year-on-year increase for the period.

Nvidia’s net income jolted up by 50% hitting $174 million, when compared to $116 million for the same period last year. All of this accounted for total revenue of $4.28 billion, a 7.1% year-on-year increase.

The only dip came from net income, which slumped 3.2% to $562 million.

Nvidia won big with its line of Tegra processors, as the division brought in $764 million in revenue, while the company’s GPU arm accounted for $3.25 billion of the total revenue figure. That’s a full-year increase of 2% for the GPU arm, and 29.3% for the Tegra division, and a 7.1% and a 89.8% increase for Q4 year-on-year respectively.

In the report, Nvidia chief executive officer Jen-Hsun Huang said of the numbers, “This year we did the best work in our company’s history. We grew our GPU and Tegra Processor businesses.

“We are sampling production silicon of the Tegra 4 platform which includes our 4G LTE modem. And we created new pillars for long term growth with Project Shield and Nvidia Grid — first-of-their-kind devices that will extend our leadership in visual computing into mobile and the cloud.”

Nvidia’s next venture is in to the console market with its Project Shield handheld, which has been gaining great traction among the gaming press and within the development community for its open-platform approach to publishing and developers.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/14/nvidia-posts-record-financials-4-28-billion-revenue-in-2013/feed/0Project Shield: Nivida seeking UK distributor, console will ‘raise bar’ for Android & PC gaminghttp://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/project-shield-nivida-seeking-uk-distributor-console-will-raise-bar-for-android-pc-gaming/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/project-shield-nivida-seeking-uk-distributor-console-will-raise-bar-for-android-pc-gaming/#commentsMon, 11 Feb 2013 13:02:03 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=338832Project Shield creator Nvidia is looking for a UK distributor and has had many people ‘knocking on its door’ since the Tegra-4 powered console was first announced at CES last month. The company has waxed lyrical about the console’s potential to disrupt the console business in a new interview.

Speaking with MCV, Nvidia’s director of product marketing Jason Paul said, “We want to sprint to get it into the key markets in Europe and Asia. Since the announcement we’ve had people knocking on our door. So there’s interest in distributing the product.

“Shield is targeting Android and PC gamers, so we are looking for people who can sell into that market. We thought that Project Shield would raise the bar for Android and PC gaming. When we looked at the complexity of the device, with all the streaming tech, we came to the conclusion that we had a device that only we could build ourselves. It is a natural step for us.

“The response has been overwhelming. We won over 30 best of show awards at CES. The amount of new coverage we received was more than anything we have ever had before.”

Project Shield is billed to launch in America and Canada in Q2 2013, although the hunt for a UK distributor continues. Once Nvidia finds one we’ll update you.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/project-shield-nivida-seeking-uk-distributor-console-will-raise-bar-for-android-pc-gaming/feed/0Project Shield: Nvidia’s Real Boxing demo shows off physics techhttp://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/project-shield-nvidias-real-boxing-demo-shows-off-physics-tech/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/project-shield-nvidias-real-boxing-demo-shows-off-physics-tech/#commentsMon, 11 Feb 2013 12:17:32 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=338814Nvidia’s Project Shield console has received a new gameplay trailer focusing on Vivid Games’ Real Boxing, a new title coming to Tegra-4 enabled devices this year. The game features neat physics tech that works in tandem with the console’s dual-analogue sticks to create some pretty convincing punches.

Project Shield boasts a Tegra 4 processer, and streams games from your PC. As such you’re probably not going to be able to enjoy triple-A performance like this while you’re on the bus, but bio breaks are certainly feasible.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/07/project-shield-demo-shows-borderlands-2-going-handheld/feed/6Nvidia Project Shield live hands-on footage: shows high-spec streaminghttp://www.vg247.com/2013/01/11/nvidia-project-shield-live-hands-on-footage-emerges/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/11/nvidia-project-shield-live-hands-on-footage-emerges/#commentsFri, 11 Jan 2013 08:37:24 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=329276Nvidia’s Project Shield has been the subject of immense scrutiny and speculation this week since it was revealed at CES – you can check out our full report on what the console involves here. Fresh video footage of the console in action has surfaced over at Mini PC Pro’s YouTube channel, showing the console running live.

The clip above shows off the Tegra-4 powered handheld, which can also be plugged into your television via HDMI, although the on-board screen itself displays at 720p. The controller has an in-built SD Card slot that lets users upgrade their storage. It plays Android titles and streams PC games at a distance to your couch, and to your television. So essentially, it enables high-end PC gaming in the living room, something Valve is also keen to establish with Steam Box.

What do you think of the above? Will it change the way gamers view PC? Let us know below.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/11/nvidia-project-shield-live-hands-on-footage-emerges/feed/11Nvidia’s Project Shield won’t be sold at a loss, company assureshttp://www.vg247.com/2013/01/08/nvidias-project-shield-wont-be-sold-at-a-loss-company-assures/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/08/nvidias-project-shield-wont-be-sold-at-a-loss-company-assures/#commentsTue, 08 Jan 2013 09:59:32 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=327996Nvidia has stated that its Tegra-4 powered Project Shield console – which was revealed at CES yesterday – will not be sold at a loss. It makes a change from most consoles which are typically loss-leaders, in that their respective manufacturers hope to make back the loss on software or licensing deals.

Engadget reports that while the above is true for Sony, Microsft and Nintendo – that games are licensed to recoup hardware losses – the same cannot be said for Nvidia, as it is not in the game development or publishing business. Therefore, it can sell Project Shield on a raw hardware basis, retaining profits for itself.

Nvidia posted a blog update on the matter, and explained, “We’ll make our money by selling the device to gamers. This time-honored approach isn’t one we’re taking with Project Shield… our goal with it is to design and sell a truly great piece of hardware, one that fits comfortably in your hand, delights your eyes and blows out your ears.”

Although Nvidia hasn’t confirmed any games from either company, both Epic and Ubisoft supplied comment for a press release accompanying the announcement.

Epic’s Mark Rein said Project Shield is “an uncompromising, high-performance console experience” for mobile devices, pinting out that Hawken and Real Boxing both utilise the Unreal Engine and “look fantastic” on the portable.

“This is just the beginning, and we’re truly excited to see what more Unreal Engine developers will do with so much horsepower in such a compact gaming device,” he added.

“Ubisoft is always excited about new hardware developments,” CEO Yves Guillemot, added, “and Project Shield promises to bring both mobile and PC gamers a great new gaming experience. Seeing the PC version of Assassin’s Creed III run on the device is a great example of this, and further strengthens Ubisoft’s long-standing relationship with Nvdia.”

Hawken publisher Meteor Games said that Project Shield is a natural extension to PC development as it’s an open platform.

Nvidia told Kotaku that Hawken developer Adhesive Games got a Project Shield prototype before Christmas, and has spent the past few weeks building a Tegra-powered version for the CES 2013 demonstration, which wowed onlookers.

The manufacturer said this Android version of Hawken is exclusive to Tegra 4, and may be exclusive to Project Shield.

According to Cousins’ report on Kotaku, Microsoft has spent some $2.996bn on Xbox 360 since it launched in 2005, while Sony has fared worse, spending $4.951 billion on PS3. Both figures are a loss, and you can see an overview of both company’s losses in Cousins’s financial table here.

Cousins, who has worked at a string of high-profile studios over the years – including Sony EA and Lionhead – has shed serious doubt on the future of the home console as we know it, citing SOny and Microsoft’s plan to sell each console at a loss as a reason for such poor fortune. It’s a poor strategy he says, as even with a combined total of 70+ million consoles sold, both companies are still losing money.

“Consoles like Xboxes, PlayStations & the Wii U are sold at a loss”, said Cousins. “It costs more to manufacture and distribute the device than it is sold for. Console manufacturers do this because they hope to make back the money from the license fee they charge for every game sold on the system.

“In order to offset the huge cost of hardware production, distribution, R&D and marketing, a hardware platform holder must sell vast quantities of hardware, and even bigger quantities of software. So much needs to be sold, in fact, that the data points to PS3 and Xbox 360 having made huge losses, despite having sold 70+ million units of hardware each.

“Of those 70 million Xbox 360s sold, a large proportion (approx. 40%) were bought after the most recent price cut of August 2009. Of the 70 million PS3s sold, a large proportion (approx. 42%) were bought since the introduction of the PS3 Slim.”

With such a large proportion of consoles being sold post-price cut, it seems as if the loss-leading strategy is failing to bear fruit for both companies. The issue isn’t being helped by some 50% of home console owners also owning a smartphone, tablet or both, devices which are seeing a rapidly advancing capacity for supporting triple-a game content.

Today’s reveal of the Tegra-4 powered Project Shielf from Nvidia shows that mobile gaming is rapidly gaining ground, and could pose a real threat to the home console market as we know it in 2013. As a final bullet point in his report, Cousin addressed this very issue, “Mobile developers and publishers are starting to target these ‘mainstream console gamers’ aggressively. I work for a mobile publisher just slightly smaller than EA, and we are targeting them aggressively.”

Predicting what he sees on the horizon for the industry, Cousins continued, “In the future, I see gaming as having two main markets:

“Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will serve the biggest market—covering kids, casual gamers and the mainstream console people.

“The core and ultra-core gamers would be served by PC gaming, which will be smaller than mobile, but that will continue to grow. Many of the old-school PC gamers I know that moved to playing games on Xbox over the last 10 years are coming back to PC because of free-to-play and indie games, controller and TV support, as well as incredible digital distribution on platforms like Steam.”

So now it’s over to you readers. Which of the two brackets above would you say you’ll fall in to, should Cousin’s predictions come to pass? Are home console manufacturers really in trouble, or is this a knee-jerk reaction? Let us know below.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/xbox-360-and-ps3-losses-total-8-billion-ex-sony-employee-paints-grim-future/feed/24Nvidia Project Shield: real-time demo footage surfaceshttp://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/nvidia-project-shield-real-time-demo-footage-surfaces/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/nvidia-project-shield-real-time-demo-footage-surfaces/#commentsMon, 07 Jan 2013 14:32:09 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=327775Nvidia announced its Tegra-4 powered Project Shield console in the wee hours this morning – you can check out Brenna’s full coverage of the hardware here. Nvidia has released a trailer for the console following its CES reveal, rendered entirely in real-time. Check out the clip after the cut.

The console can be used as a handheld or hooked up to your television via HDMI. It’s a nifty piece of kit that looks to open up mobile and indie development in a big way. In fact, Pat wrote a big blog about why home console manufacturers should be worried going into 2013. Check it out here.

IGN reports that footage has been shown at CES – currently going on now – showing a survivor laying waste to zombies with an M4 assault rifle, all running on Tegra 4.

Here’s the debut image:

It comes as Nvidia announced its Tegra-4 powered Project Shield console. Brenna has written an in-depth round up of what the console involves, along with images here. Check it out, then read Pat’s opinion blog on why Nvidia – along with Valve and other PC/Mac/Linux companies could create serious disruption among the console market this year.

We’ll have more on Dead Trigger 2 as it happens.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/dead-trigger-2-announced-for-android-ios-tegra-4-footage-revealed/feed/02013 – the year PC gaming disrupts the console businesshttp://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/2013-%e2%80%93-the-year-pc-gaming-disrupts-the-console-business/
http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/07/2013-%e2%80%93-the-year-pc-gaming-disrupts-the-console-business/#commentsMon, 07 Jan 2013 10:01:55 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=327651The console market is begging to be broken, says Patrick Garratt, and Valve is more than aware of the opportunity. This is the year that could change video gaming for good.

We could be about to see the biggest disruption to the console market since Microsoft launched Xbox in 2001.

We may have seen one of 2013′s strongest themes emerge in the weekend’s news, that of the traditional console space being disrupted by PC gaming firms such as Valve and Nvidia.

Talk of Valve’s “Steambox” is accelerating quickly. It was reported on Saturday that a Valve employee has said the machine is Linux-based and console-like. A 2013 announcement was also mentioned, and we’ve heard similar talk – specifically related to E3 – in the past 48 hours.

Tellingly, Nvidia used its CES keynote last night to make first mention of Project Shield, a twin-stick handheld based on the firm’s new Tegra 4 mobile chip and Android.

The implications of the PC mind-set democratising the console space are potentially enormous. If the Steambox reports are true and Valve is capable of cutting a hardware deal that delivers a meaningful machine at a reasonable price, we could be about to see the biggest disruption to the console market since Microsoft launched Xbox in 2001.

Fear and loathing

I’ve been sceptical of Valve’s designs on the console space. Big Picture launched last year, and at the time I wrote about how the TV-aimed app shouldn’t worry Microsoft and Sony as there was still an issue over the affordability of hardware. Steam can run in the living room all it likes, but if you need a £700 PC to make it look pretty it’s still for the desktop hardcore, right? If Valve delivers an affordable Steam-branded box, that argument gets thrown out with the bathwater.

There’s logic in Valve making a hardware move this year. Microsoft and Sony are both about to announce their new boxes, and neither piece of kit is likely to be cheap. This means Valve will be able to come forward with a PC in the higher range of launch prices and get away with it. Tactically, if this is going to happen it should be now.

Hardware affordability aside, and far more interestingly, the console market is begging to be smashed. Microsoft and Sony’s eco-systems are fascist states, brutal regimes in which partners may be decorated with medals and lavished with mansions and dancing boys, or tortured with impunity and locked in the deepest dungeons to fester and die. Indie gaming, famously, has been whimpering in PlayStation and Xbox’s oubliette for years. Few extra-publisher independent titles make it outside of Steam. Microsoft and Sony are only interested in big deals.

That Microsoft and Sony are unshakably linked to brick and mortar retail hardly helps them. Console manufacturers believe they need shops to sell boxes. Shops need to make money, so they have to sell games. Because of the costs involved in putting a disc in the hands of a consumer through a shop, the price of games stays artificially high. The relationship the console-makers and high street chains currently enjoy with each other is summed up best by this picture. You can bet the media owners are going to pull the trigger at some point in the coming generation.

Console manufacturers and high street
retailers, pictured this morning.

Steam, conversely, is an everything-to-everyone platform which offers downloads of thousands of games, ranging from a few pounds up to the triple-A libraries of the big publishers, and suffers none of the constraints of disc-based retail. It’s about as democratic as a gaming platform gets right now. Indie’s oculus and a necessity to all publishers, Steam is home to an army of gamers, both core and light. The service achieved a concurrency of almost 7 million players in the last 24 hours.

Users cannot wait any longer for something to disseminate Steam’s openness away from the PC monitor, both in terms of their homes and their general lives. The need is blatantly obvious. We live in a world of Spotify and Netflix, and yet consoles have heretofore inextricably coupled games to discs. Nevermore: the internet generation demands its content on tap and everywhere. It stands to reason that Nvidia is savvy of Valve’s plans – Nvidia cards account for more than 50% of all Steam usage – and likely knows there’s a gap for a Steam-playing handheld in the coming year, hence the Project Shield announcement today. With Project Shield and Steambox, we have a giant, discless habitat on your desktop, your TV and on the train. With two hardware launches we have, in theory, competitors to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, across all their formats, coupled with one of the most robust multiplayer and matchmaking services on earth, a service that carries no sub. It makes sense, and if you’re any of the current big three it’s incredibly dangerous.

For the gamer, however, the prospect of a new challenger is thrilling. We could be about to see the ludicrousness of inflated digital delivery prices popped with the neatest of pins, of double-A games making sense at £10 launches, of indie going mainstream, of increased sales for triple-A. E3 this year is guaranteed to be pivotal, but if Valve arrives with a console offering it may destroy our current perceptions of video gaming wholesale. Fingers crossed.

GeForce Experience
The GeForce Experience, as Nvidia calls it, is a suite of tools which allows users to achieve the best possible performance settings without having to fiddle with them on their tod.

CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said Nvidia has a team of expert gamers which play every game, and determine which settings are best for performance and visual fidelity. When a gamer uses the GeForce Experience, it automatically takes both these optimal settings and the user’s hardware capabilities into account, and adjusts the game’s settings accordingly.

This is supposed to introduce an element of stability to PC gaming, so that, console-like, players get the best possible results without having to make adjustments which can seem esoteric and confusing to new PC gamers. The suite will come free with GeForce hardware and is designed to lower the entry barrier to PC gaming.

Nvidia Grid Gaming System
Accessibility seems to be Nvidia’s catchword this year; it wants to bring the glories of PC gaming even to those not ready to lash out on hardware. It went into more detail on its previously announced cloud gaming initiative, the Nvidia Grid Gaming System.

The new offering will support SmartTVs and low-end devices like laptops, allowing them access to Nvidia’s tech farms, which it calls the Grid, to play and access save files.

Huang said the Grid will deliver on the promise of cloud gaming, because it supports up to 24 users on each server – more than many existing server architectures do, making cloud gaming more practical.

Nvidia won’t offer a streaming games service like OnLive or Gaikai; it intends to license the tech to partners. Each licensed Grid System includes 20 Grid Servers, with 10 GPUs each. It provides 200 teraflops of processing power, which is equivalent to 700 Xbox 360 consoles.

Tegra 4 and Project Shield
While it was at it, Nvidia also used the CES to unveil its latest high-power mobile processor. The Tegra 4 has 72 GU cores,making it about six times as powerful as the Tegra 3. A new image processing engine means it can complete oeprations at ten times the speed of current devices.

The new processor retains the quad core set up of the Tegra 3, but it has Cortex A15 cores and is compatible with LTE networks.

As usual, Nvidia claimed the new tech is the fastest mobile processor ever.

Of particular interest was a video of something called Project Shield, a Tegra 4 powered gaming device. The portable console looked like a typical twin-stick control pad attached to a 5″ screen, and runs Android.

A micro SD slot allows for cellular connection, and HDMI allows you to hook up to a larger display should you wish. The on-board sound is supposed to be pretty special, and the built-in battery provides up to 38 hours of juice, Nvidia boasted.